MALAYSIA - MALAISIE - MALASIA

His Excellency Datuk Amar Sulaiman Haji Daud, Minister for Agriculture of Malaysia

It is indeed a great pleasure and honour for me to address the World Food Summit on behalf of my country Malaysia. I join those before me in congratulating you on your election as Chairman of this very important World Food Summit. And we also offer our congratulations to all the Vice-Chairmen.

I would like to commend all those who have participated in formulating a comprehensive Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Action Plan. I would also like to congratulate the leadership role and commendable success of the Director-General of FAO, Dr. Jacques Diouf, in the various preparatory meetings which culminated in the World Food Summit in Rome today.

We are gathered here today in pursuit of a strategic alliance to discuss and look for urgent solutions and to commit ourselves to fulfil an agenda of vital and mutual concern - global hunger and malnutrition. "Freedom from hunger is an inalienable and inviolable right of all members of the human family". Food is the most basic of human needs and food availability is a necessary condition for the most fundamental of human rights, the right to life. Yet, despite the fact that food is produced in abundance, staggering millions are still starving and undernourished, living in hunger and desperation. Malaysia joins the world community in expressing our serious concern for the poor, the hungry, for the undernourished and for the suffering. The latest crisis of the deprived, of Rwandan refugees in Zaire plagued by hunger and starvation, is a moving reminder of the need for the problems to be resolved immediately by the international community.

Why is it that, despite advances in science and technology and the sophistication in management of food production and in the agricultural sector generally, coupled with extensive agricultural development programmes involving developed and developing countries, famine, hunger, starvation and undernourishment still exist?

This certainly calls for an urgent need for the global community to critically examine the root causes of all these problems, and commit ourselves to search for sustainable solutions to reduce these intolerable injustices and disparities.

The solutions inevitably need to be multi-dimensional in approach as the problems are not purely that of inadequacy in food production. Poverty has been highlighted as a major cause of hunger and malnutrition. Poverty redressal therefore is necessary to get rid of the paradox of hunger in a world of plenty. But more than that, unjust economic, social and political systems and inadequate access to means of production and to food, natural and man-made disasters, and politics which come in various guises such as using food as economic and political weapons, make the problems more complex to unravel and even more complicated to resolve. It requires skills, it requires strong commitment, political and economic ways and means as well as sincerity and moral conscience on the part of all concerned. We must have the courage and strong political will to dismantle the forces and structure that perpetuate social injustices.

To overcome poverty, Malaysia has focused on growth with equity throughout its history of development planning. The incidence of poverty has decreased from 44 percent in 1976 to 7.9 percent in 1995 achieved through innovative strategies and programmes. Our integrated approach to development - physical, economic and social, including education and health - has been instrumental in redressing poverty in our country.

Our land development schemes, that help elevate the standard of living and the quality of life for the rural poor and the landless, have been acknowledged to be among the most successful strategies to reduce poverty. In addition, we have also established a highly successful National Unit Trust Scheme to encourage savings and investment and to distribute wealth and reduce inequality. In this regard, just as we have benefitted from the experiences of others we are ever ready to share our experiences through Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries as well as bilateral programmes.

Increasing food production on land and sea, through the optimization of resources in a sustainable manner, has been the thrust of Malaysia's National Agricultural Policy. The policy is market-driven and private-sector-led to ensure efficiency of food production for domestic needs as well as for export.

The documents that we have adopted at this august Summit have been the product of intense and delicate negotiations. The follow-up actions of governments, the international community, NGOs and other members of civil society including the private sector, would be to translate into action, and not misinterpret, the spirit and vision of the Rome Declaration and global Plan of Action.

Various issues have been highlighted in the documents, such as good governance, people's participation, civil strife, corruption and environmental degradation. These issues, if put under any form of scrutiny, occur both in developing and developed countries. Such issues are indeed, the enabling environment that contributes to the realization of global food security. However, we trust these issues should not be interpreted as conditionalities to frustrate genuine efforts at implementing programmes and projects aimed at achieving food security at household, national, regional and global levels.

The effect and impact of hunger and malnutrition have reached a global dimension. The globalization process that the new world order seeks to promote necessarily requires mobilization of new energies and resources employed in multi-pronged and innovative ways, to combat hunger and malnutrition.

Globalization also requires an equitable and smart partnership, genuine efforts at cultivating and nurturing sustainable alliances for mutual and all-round long-term benefits. The hungry and the malnourished cannot wait much longer for any indifference and any deferral. A clear and well-targeted global agenda on agriculture should be put in place, based on the global Plan of Action including a mega onslaught on poverty.

A new wave of initiatives in synergy with existing efforts to increase global food production, especially in low-income food-deficit countries, must be set in motion, requiring badly needed technology transfer, refocusing agricultural research including bio-technology that would benefit those most in need. We should redouble our efforts in North-South and South-South technical cooperation, with FAO playing a leading role.

Let us embark on this strategic approach based on the concerted efforts of all nations, regions and international organizations. A fair and equitable distribution of responsibilities between developed and developing nations has to be ensured before our endeavours can be realized. When the barriers are down and the world community cooperates and advances, everybody wins, and I am confident that with sincerity, with commitment and dedication by all involved, one can look forward to a future with Food for All.